Robots are great. I am saying that now, so that when a future civilization of robots takes us captive they will search through the Guardian web archive and realise I said 'robots are great' and then they'll choose to save me.

In fact, I love robots so much I have written a list of my top ten favourite fictional ones from film and literature (and pop music). Here it is:

The trouble with having a brain 'the size of a planet' is that it can lead to all kinds of personality problems. In Marvin's case he is continually depressed and bored because no task he is given can ever occupy more than the tiniest fraction of his mind. He is, after all, 50,000 times more intelligent than the average human, or 30 billion times more intelligent than a live mattress. More than anything, Marvin teaches us the danger of too much knowledge. 'I could calculate your chances of survival,' he tells Arthur Dent at one point. 'But you wouldn't like it.'

Not to be confused with the brash Marvel superhero played by Robert Downey Jr, Ted Hughes' The Iron Man is a novel of mythic power. It was among my favourite books as a child, and still haunts me. Unlike a lot of fictional robots, this iron man's origins aren't ever known or explained. He just is. Though he is initially not treated well by humans (unless being trapped in an underground pit counts as good treatment) he still opts to save humanity when a strange alien threat appears in the form of a 'space-bat-angel-dragon'. A stoic hero.

A controversial choice, perhaps. Is HAL really a robot? He is technically a computer program with artificial intelligence and his only physical presence is a camera eye, but in Kubrick's classic film version of the novel he does seem to be a physical presence, maybe because he controls a spaceship. Plus research tells me he has been inducted in the Robot Hall of Fame.

Daft Punk are technically Parisian musicians making quite a nice living by reinventing disco for the twenty-first century. But I think they also qualify as fictional robots too, as their masked robotic personas have made a stronger impression on our collective consciousness than the humans behind them. And as computers pretty much co-write half the charts these days, robot popstars are probably the future.

A special mention for one of fiction's earliest robots, he is not the most advanced technologically (a round-bodied mechanical man who needs to be wound up to function), but he set the template for fictional robots to come. He struggles with the concept of emotion but is a loyal servant to Dorothy.

My children Lucas and Pearl wouldn't forgive me if I didn't include their favourite robot. Wall-E is a 'Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth class' but – like all the best fictional robots – is so much more than his job title suggests. He falls in love, and even has a soft-spot for Barbara Streisand movies. The first half of this film, the part set on a humanless post-apocalyptic Earth, is up there with the sci-fi greats. This was Pixar's ET moment.

7. Elio, from A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones

One of the reasons I loved time-travel yarn A Tale of Time City when I first read it in the eighties was the character of Elio. Elio is a humanoid robot from the future, who – like many others – is far more intelligent than the humans he hangs out with. The interesting thing about Elio is that he hates other robots, and gets angry when he sees them. It seems to be an ego thing.

A lot of the robots in Asimov's novels are interesting more as concepts than characters, but this one is different. As an unintended result of experiments carried out on him by the daughter of a famous roboticist, he ends up being able to read and influence emotions. ('Emotions are readily apparent, thoughts are not'.) His telepathy leads to a desire to save humanity. The 'R' stands for robot.

C3-PO may be fluent in over six million forms of communication, but you have to feel some sympathy for R2-D2, whose bleeps always seemed so positive and cheery placed next to the pedantic pessimism of his golden friend and translator. Still, C3-PO's neuroticism – along with Han Solo's smirk – weirdly remains one of the most human things about the first Star Wars trilogy, thanks to Anthony Daniels' voice and a rather touching case of separation anxiety (the poignant refrain of'R2D2 where are you?' to this day tugs at my soul).